ShareA couple of days ago I watched DreamWorks’ 2008 thriller, Eagle Eye. The film is fairly entertaining provided that you don’t take it too seriously and it has a decent score by Brian Tyler. However, the climax of the film raises an issue I have with the portrayal of musical performances in many films. In this scene Sam Holloman’s school band plays the Star Spangled Banner. A trigger that will set off the explosive necklace worn by Sam’s mother Rachel is set to activate when Sam plays a high F on his trumpet corresponding to the word ‘free’ in the last stanza of the U.S. national anthem.
Copyright 2008 DreamWorks Pictures. All rights reserved.
There are several problems with this scene. First, although the miming is pretty good from the children with the instruments, there are instruments not present on screen such as cymbals and lower brass which are clearly audible! The music is also ‘too good’ – how hard would it have been to create a new recording of the piece which contains some deliberate imperfections and matches the instruments which are present on screen?
My other problem with this scene is perhaps more subtle and less obvious to the general movie-goer. The notation which is displayed on screen does not match the key of the music we hear! The piece sounds in B-major but the notation is in the key of G-major, except for the last note which for some reason has been changed to an F when it should actually be a D to fit with the rest of the score (the actual note we hear is an F#).
Copyright 2008 DreamWorks Pictures. All rights reserved.
Of course, there are hundreds of other examples of musical performances in movies which don’t quite cut it. Even very good examples – such as the violin and cello duets of Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) in 20th Century Fox’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World or the impressive performance by Jamie Foxx in Universal Pictures’ Ray – fall short in some respect.
Perhaps the most effective musical performances are those played on instruments which we are not familiar with because we don’t know how they should sound or be played. A good example would be the futuristic instruments played by the cantina band in Star Wars Episode VI: A New Hope. But that discussion is for another day…
Are there any films which flawlessly portray ‘live’ performance by actors? And more importantly does it matter? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
7 Replies
I think if you see ‘Shine’ the actor does a tremendous job. He must actually play – I mean Geoffrey Rush.
Thanks for the comment. I’ll go and check that film out!
Hi Peter,
“Shine” was also the movie that immediately sprang to my mind. The fact that the most prominent composer featured in the film is Rachmaninov (especially his third piano concerto), the quality of the portrayal is all the more impressive.
By amazing coincidence, this film is currently available on the iPlayer (until the early hours of Tuesday 10 August):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007bgt8/Shine/
Mark
Hi Mark,
I watched ‘Shine’ the other day – thanks for the link. It’s an excellent film and you and Carlos are right – the quality of the performance on screen is very good. I did a bit of reading and Geoffrey Rush restarted piano lessons for the role so that his hands could be used in many of the shots. However, the credits do list another person as Geoffrey’s hand double and in addition, I don’t think all of the playing on screen matched up with the audio – at least in pitch. It could be that the music was played at the wrong pitch because the rhythms and contours of the melodies were generally very accurate!
Definitely one of the best portrayals of musical performance on-screen though!
Hi Peter,
I have noticed this phenomena is not isolated to just music, but to any other human activity being portrayed in film. Computer hacking is a perfect example. As a technology consultant, I don’t know how many times I’ve been irritated with cheesy hacking scene recreations where the supposed hacker genius just sits down in front of a computer and starts typing random things and then he has somehow brute forced the password or found a vulnerability in less than 30 seconds to the audience. This kind of stuff is total nonsense. At least in the new tron movie you actually see a bash shell.
The directors probably don’t care enough about the few people in the audience who are knowledgeable enough to see through the inauthenticity of the scene. Spending extra time on fine details in some sequences might not be worth pleasing the 0.1 percent of the audience who knows the realities of what it is they are portraying. The majority of people have their minds in lazy mode when they sit down and watch a film, it’s true.
Thank you for the comment Bruce – interesting to hear that this sort of thing happens in other areas too; I’m not surprised! I guess you’re right about the director not caring but I don’t think it would take much to correct some of the smaller errors!